Symbolic Logic Class Bust

Graduate School Law School
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I’m posting for a friend’s daughter who asked for some advise. Actually her mom, my friend, is asking for the advise. It turns out that the D is 100% sure that she wants to go to law school. So she went to her pre law advisor and he convinced her to change majors- from political science to philosophy. Well, the Logic class prerequisite for philosophy majors has not gone well. She will come out with a C or maybe even lower. According to her D, this is a class that is notoriously difficult and the professor is totally into tearing them up. No grade inflation either. I asked the D if her GPA can take a hit and she said yes but I’m not sure if this is accurate. She does not like to look weak at all with others. But she admitted that she really does not understand the logic material at all.

Should she go back to political science? The D claims that the philosophy classes will get easier. The D switched because she thinks that majoring in philosophy will help her get a high LSAT score (since philosophy majors score the highest). She did not switch because she is interested in the subject matter.

I think that she has it all wrong personally. I think the major is pretty self selective to begin with and those students would have scored high anyways. Maybe there is some positive effect that getting your brain trained to think a certain way helps in the LSAT but I don’t think it’s a reason to switch majors. TBH, I don’t think she would listen to any advise based on research. She’s pretty stubborn. And she wants to get into T14. Especially now that UT is in T14.

The other question is, if she takes some summer CC classes (even if her private school does not factor those classes into the undergraduate GPA) can this bump up her GPA for law school consideration? I understand that law school admissions GPA takes in all undergrad classes. So these CC classes count, right? Is this a good strategy? Tell me your thoughts. I don’t have any experience with law school stuff but have been reading about it. My own D is thinking about LS but still exploring all options whereas this kid has been talking about it since freakin middle school. I would hate for this kid to really mess up her chances based on stupid advice from the pre law advisor. But then she probably won’t follow anything I say over her advisor.

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major is nearly relevant, so A’s in PoliSci will be non-A’s in Phil every time.

One of the tougher majors at Berkeley is Phil; it actually has a lower mean GPA than the main premed major, and the Phil majors wear that badge with pride. Too bad, since they are hurting thier own grads for professional schools. The story can be much different at other colleges, perhaps your D’s.

Phil is a fine major at many colleges but it in itself, won’t yield a top LSAT score.

ALL college classes count in LSAC GPA, so yes, community courses will count.

Since admission to LS is primarily GPA+LSAT, earning A’s is key. Take the summer after graduation to prep for the LSAT.

btw: UT is not in the T14, as commonly defined, which is the 14 law schools that have been ranked in USNews’ top 10 at least once. In other words, all 14 of the schools in the T14, including GULC, have been ranked in the top 10 since USNews started ranking in the late 80’s. For UT or UCLA or Vandy to move into that echelon, they’d have to jump to the top 10, and then the T14 would become the T15. :slight_smile:

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@bluebayou, it’s not my D who is the Philosophy major. My kid is out of state. My friend’s D is at a private school in Texas. It’s a great school but has some tough standards for some majors I think.

Thanks for the clarification on T14. I didn’t know that UT hadn’t officially made T14.

There is much buzz citing that it did this year since it went to 14 and Georgetown went to 15. There were even some headlines that it was now T14 school. In fact, an L1 from UT talked about this as a source of contention with her old college roommate who is at Georgetown. I think they were just playing around though.

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Above the Law has an article about it- " Is T14 dead? Is it T15? T13? Was T14 arbitrary all along?"

Yeah. They are all pretty great law schools and who cares about a number? But there are those that are very very atached to that stuff.

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